User blog:Odin-gaming/Ultimate Apocalypse Review and Installation Guide
See the full review on Odin Gaming . I don’t think I’ll ever play a vanilla game of DoW again. It’s just. So. Goddamn. Epic. It’s like it was made for me. There are 12 armies to choose from (if you use some of the recommended partner mods). And they have some crazy titans and superweapons – enough to make the Emperor proud. There is a lot of additional complexity introduced to the game with UA – more buildings, more units, and more ways for them to interact and for you to interact with them. I spent a significant amount of time reading unit descriptions (to then immediately forget unit descriptions) my first through playthroughs – and that was just with one race. As with any RTS, you may way to practice on a lower difficulty while you get to grips with a new race. It’s worth noting that in adding all of this new content, some serious imbalance issues have been introduced. Casuals might not notice (or care), but I don’t think the spirit of the mod is in well-balanced, precisely-executed strategy. Some might see the extra complexity as a negative. I get that. And it’s definitely easy to get lost amongst all the options presented to you in UA. But I also think it’s still simple enough to bumble along to the end-game and start playing with nukes, and I feel like that’s really a feeling at the core of the Warhammer universe, at least for me – unadulterated brawls on a ridiculous scale. If you’re feeling disappointed by DoW3, or put off by the mixed reception, this might be a good opportunity to dust off that old copy of DoW that set the bar so high, and give it a bit of polish right from the heart of the fans. Installation There are instructions provided on the UA MODDB page but they’re a little confusing. Hopefully those I’ve provided below will be clearer. 1) Get the game Obviously you’re going to need the base game. For those who didn’t play the original DoW or its expansions, it works like this: *Dawn of War – base game, four races (Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, Orks) *Winter Assault – expansion (requires either DoW base or one of the standalone expansions), one race (Imperial Guard) *Dark Crusade – standalone expansion, two races (Tau, Necrons) *Soulstorm – standalone expansion, two races (Sisters of Battle, Dark Eldar) Each expansion also added new units to the existing races. The final two expansions (Dark Crusade and Soulstorm) were standalone but didn’t give you access to the races contained in preceding games. That is, if you only had Soulstorm, you would only be able to use the Sisters of Battle and Dark Eldar. If you wanted to use anyone else, you’d need to purchase the other games. The mod installation instructions indicate you should only need Dawn of War – Soulstorm. All races should be available in skirmish matches with the AI if you just own Soulstorm and use the UA mod. This means, for example, that you don’t need Winter Assault if you want to use the Imperial Guard in a skirmish match. However, if you want to use the additional armies in multiplayer, you’ll have to get the additional games. If you just use Soulstorm, UA, plus the Tyranids mod, you’ll have access to the following armies in multiplayer: *Sisters of Battle (SS) *Dark Eldar (SS) *Daemonhunters Inquisition (UA) *Chaos Daemons (UA) *Tyranids (Tyranids) If you want the rest (and you should want the rest), you’ll need to get the additional games. You can get the lot in the Dawn of War Master Collection. 2) Get the mods At the time of writing, you only need to download two mods (it used to be more for the extra races, but the modders are collaborating to make things easier): *Ultimate Apocalypse (latest version at time of writing is 1.88.5, release date 1st December 2016) *Tyranids (latest version at time of writing is 0.5b2, release date 23rd September 2012) 3) Run Ultimate Apocalypse installer Launch the downloaded executable. Choose your Soulstorm installation directory; if you used a DVD to install it (!) then it’ll likely be C:\Program Files (x86)\THQ\Dawn of War – Soulstorm. If you installed it from Steam, then it will most likely be C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Dawn of War – Soulstorm. If it’s not either of those, then you’re a computer person who remembers where it got installed. When selecting components, you can select everything. You probably don’t need the browser tab to the Tyranids mod since you’ve already got it, though! Installation can take a while if you’re not using an SSD as this installer unpacks 8.8 GB of files. 4) Run the 4 GB Patch for Soulstorm Installation will have placed a shortcut on your desktop. This allows you to run a patcher that lets Soulstorm utilise more RAM on modern systems (which it most certainly will have to do given the sorts of battles that UA enables). Patching is easy: #Launch the patcher with the new shortcut on the desktop (called “4GB Patch for Soulstorm”). This should immediately present you with an Explorer window in your Soulstorm installation directory. #Select “Soulstorm.exe” in your installation directory and click “Open”. This will run the patcher for this executable. #Click “Another File” in the patcher UI. #Select “GraphicsConfig.exe” in your installation directory and click “Open”. This will run the patcher for this executable. And you’re done! Delete the desktop shortcut if you like; the patcher is maintained in the Soulstorm installation directory. 5) Run Tyranids mod installer Make sure you choose the Soulstorm installation directory appropriately as in step 3. This is especially important here because the installer assumes that Soulstorm is installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\THQ\Dawn of War – Soulstorm, so it looks like everything’s dandy and you might just click through without realising it. 6) Launch the DoW Mod Manager This was installed automatically for you, don’t worry! In your Soulstorm installation directory there is an executable called “DoW Mod Manager 1.3”. This utility lets you select which mods you’d like to apply to this game. Back when DoW was released, modding wasn’t supported by developers in the same way that it is now. This is the community’s answer to the problem of selecting mods on startup, much like you can do with many games today. The “everything, please” option is UltimateApocalypse_THB_DIDHT, which is near the bottom of the list. Select it and click “START GAME WITH SELECTED MOD” in the top-right of the window. If this isn’t available, there is red text in the right hand pane, or a big red cross on the page, it means something went wrong with installation or you skipped a step. The red text should give you a clue as to what went wrong. 7) (Optional) Run first time configuration If you ran through this list one right after the other, as I did, you’ll need to run the first time graphics setup for the game. Note that skipping the ‘Test’ option will set all graphics configurations to low. 8) Play the game! I had to launch the game a second time (by clicking the “START GAME WITH SELECTED MOD” button) after first time setup. Now go blow some shit up. Category:Blog posts